The main problem in a re-booting would be the way we consider value and employ resources, energy in itself can come from other sources but what made oil so prevalent was that it was cheap and that it could be burned 24/7 giving energy the low cost it has and enabling all the rest.

If you take the cost of energy out any development would be as fast if not faster. But that is an economic problem, not a technical one.
You could produce solar energy for free if you decide that those technologies are owned by everyone.

In europe we speak different languages, most people only one, the next group English and their own one. Fewer people would speak three. If you only speak one you don't care. If you speak English you are annoyed that the BBC is blocked. But pretty mush no one is bothered by geoblocking beside intra-european expats. However companies still block their contents to only those in the coutry. The reality is if you disable geoblocking in the EU its the US content we want to get, the rest is rethorics.
An all out ban on geoblocking would have to force akamai and other content providers to not block when operating in the EU.
That would be tricky, the whole question is not properly based because of the language issue that one seems to mention.

I agree GPG is an unwieldy tool at best, I have tried since 97, on and off to use it. It is only now that I turned to emacs that a simple enough wrapper for me makes it usable. Yes you heard that right it took emacs to bring GPG in to my life.

You forgot having your per mile insurance being directly taken out of your appStore balance. But you get to know where all your friends are and what they are listenning to... Oh the joys of the automotive industry.

Baing about to finish a PhD this is worrying thinking that the deep understanding of a technique can be replaced by a well programmed API. But of course managerial people, a.k.a decission makers will eat that raw.
If you want my data just ask for it.

An anonymous reader writes: The virtual currency Bitcoin lost 21 per cent of its value yesterday, equating to a total loss this year of 44 per cent. Reports have suggested that this rapid fall is squeezing computer supporting systems and is raising alarm about its future viability. Bitcoin’s value fell to $179.37, 85 per cent lower than its record peak of $1,165 at the end of 2013. In total, nearly $11.3bn has been lost in Bitcoin’s value since its 2013 high. The decline has raised concern for Bitcoin ‘miners’ who support the transactions made in the digital currency, and whose profits become squeezed as its price falls against traditional currencies.

Do not look to Europe over the last 14 years the educational sytem has started charging more and more for undergraduate studies.
The research funding bodies have been cutting down progresively their funds and certain fields like the humanities are completely devoid of funnding or brainpower after the Bologna agreements passed making only technical studies interesting.
PhDs are extremely lucky if they get a first post-doc, that is you just showed you can do research and no one hires you to do it.
China on the other side has already reached the level of investment of the EU.
More and more conferences and events are now organised in China, if I were a student now it is mandarin I would be focusing on as a way of landing a research job.
Hell its on my todo list already and I am only one year away from finishing my PhD in computer science in The Netherlands. One of the few EU countries with Germany that takes reseayarch seriously, yet cuts are also being felt here.